Explosions in the Sky - 2004 Friday Night Lights

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• published: 22 Feb 2015
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reup.. "Friday Night Lights Original Soundtrack" (2004) Produced and Recorded in Burbank, California by Brian Reitzell, Justin Stanley and Richard Jory June and August 2004 00:00 From West Texas 02:37 Your Hand In Mine (w/strings) 06:42 Our Last Days As Children 09:19 An Ugly Fact of Life 12:11 Home - omitted - Sonho Dourado - Daniel Lanois - 14:45 To West Texas 18:46 Your Hand In Mine (Goodbye) 20:43 Inside It All Feels The Same - omitted - Do You Ever Feel Cursed - David Torn - 25:03 Lonely Train - omitted - Seagull - Bad Company - 31:51 The Sky Above, The Field Below 37:17 A Slow Dance Every once in awhile someone asks us how we ended up working on a big studio movie about football. The simplest answer is that we got an email. This particular email was from Brian Reitzell who was the music supervisor for both The Virgin Suicides and Lost In Translation (two movies that we are quite fond of). He said he was working on a new movie and he was wondering if we would be interested in doing music for it. We told him we would. He got back in touch with us a few days later and told us that the movie he was working on was called Friday Night Lights. He didn't really have to explain much as we were somewhat familiar with the book and even more familiar with the setting of the story. West Texas. Midland and Odessa. This is the part of Texas where three out of the four of us grew up. We all read the book and we loved it. It was sad and joyful and depressing and triumphant and funny and ugly and exciting. We said yes. Several months later we found ourselves in a studio in Burbank, staring at a movie screen and trying to write music. Our fears of having weird movie producers and studio executives hovering over us were completely unfounded. It was just us, Brian Reitzell and two friendly Australian engineers (Justin Stanley and Richard Jory). We were surrounded by all sorts of rare equipment (vintage drum machines, rare keyboards and organs, strange percussion devices). We didn't really use any of it. We just stuck with what we knew. There was also a kitchen that was stocked with great quantities of snacks. Chips, cookies, several boxes of Twizzlers, etc. It was delightful. We were in the middle of a tour and in New York City the day in October that the movie opened. We hurried through our soundcheck and literally ran to the closest theater. We got our tickets and sat down and watched the movie. Then we left and ran back to the venue and played our show. Amazon Editorial Reviews, Product Description Novelist H. G. Bissinger's story about a high school football team in Texas went to the big screen with Billy Bob Thornton in the lead role. The score and background music was largely composed for the film by indie faves Explosions in the Sky, with a little help from Daniel Lanois, David Torn, and Bad Company. Producer Brian Reitzell has gone against convention in designing musical atmospheres for the film that don't conform either to the martial music generally associated with football or the C&W; associated with Texas. Instead, he opted for a more autumnal, introspective sound that serves as a perfect backdrop for the film, but also stands up on its own without benefit of any other audio-visual cues. AMG Review by James Christopher Monger For small-town America, high-school football is a religion. The home team in Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights has to travel over 250 miles of sun-parched southwest highway to meet their rival team, and who better to paint those Texas skies than the Lone Star State's own Explosions in the Sky? Soundtrack producer Brian Reitzell, whose fluid work on The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation is instantly recognizable here, throws Daniel Lanois, David Torn, and Bad Company into the mix as well, resulting in a collection of music that redirects its intended genre into something altogether spiritual. Sports dramas usually rely on an infuriating blend of swelling strings and "We Will Rock You" bombast, so it's a real treat to hear the post rock quartet's guitar-driven soundscapes illuminating camera close-ups of down-to-the-wire scoreboards and off-field bonding. The wistful, string-driven "Your Hand in Mine" -- courtesy of arranger and father of Beck, David Campbell -- is as close to "traditional" as Friday Night Lights gets, but the atmospheric centerpiece owes a lot more to Brian Eno than it does John Williams. Much of the material was culled from bits and pieces of the band's two Temporary Residence releases -- the director had grown used to them in the context of the work print of the film -- then combined with all-new compositions, making FNL a must-have for fans, but it's the patient way the soundtrack unfolds, Bad Company and all, that gives it an edge over soulless, hit-driven opponents like Remember the Titans or Any Given Sunday.